


good love

by smithens



Series: good love [2]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: 5+1 Things, Adulthood, Coming of Age, Dancing, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Male Homosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24450274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: Five times Thomas Barrow danced with a woman, and one time he didn't.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow & Daisy Mason, Thomas Barrow & Phyllis Baxter, Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Series: good love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146188
Comments: 16
Kudos: 131





	good love

**Author's Note:**

> title from [Aly & AJ's "Good Love"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3yoXph7fgU)

**1898**

Seven _should_ be grown up enough to go places and do things but it's not, not yet, so when Meggie goes to the dance at the school gymnasium (she's not even _in_ school anymore but he _is,_ it's not right but nobody listens to him when he says so) his mother teaches him how to lead: where to put his hands, which foot goes where and all the steps that go along with it. When she's not humming a tune she keeps saying _when I was a little girl_ , and she tells him stories about his granddad he never got to meet (but Meggie did and that's not fair neither) and about when she fell in love with Dad and about when he taught _your sister just as I'm teaching you_.

He asks when they get to switch and she says _we don't,_ and when he asks why she says _that's just the way things are,_ and he says he doesn't like it, and she tells him that he'll come to, and he asks _why_ , and she laughs at him and says everybody else is perfectly happy with it being that way round, so when he grows up he'll change his mind…

...and he tells her he is grown up and asks why _again,_ and she says _because it makes sense, Thomas,_ in the same voice as when he doesn't put toys back where they came from or use his table manners, only this time he didn't do anything wrong.

**1907**

When he's sixteen Margaret and John marry in the church and have the reception in the parish hall. He'd planned to slip out after the kissing-of-the-bride but in the end he can't manage it. Too many people means too many eyes, and he can't afford to let people talk, not now. If he leaves they'll wonder where to, and they'll be right, so he's not going to give them the satisfaction. If the wedding had happened even a month earlier there wouldn't be any bloody problems but it hadn't.

Josie Cottam has her eye on him like always, and he wonders if she _knows._ Seeing how she brightens up when he approaches he figures probably not, and her brother'll be livid if he finds out she danced with him after what happened—which means he's got to, hasn't he? So he pencils himself in for a waltz and kisses her hand after, very continental.

A few minutes after he lets her go he finds out his dear old dad paid for his other favourite child to come from London, and though he's got no patience for it he answers every single bloody question she asks him. And then they dance the next one, and then she doesn't shut up about how he's _so tall now you've really grown up haven't you Thomas_ , and _then_ , when she's done with him and he's got Leonora Howard in his arms because apparently nobody bothered telling her neither, he looks over and sees Meg (all dressed up in her Sunday best with a perfect little inherited ring on her finger) whispering in her ear. If somebody told Phyllis Baxter to hold a poker face she couldn't do it even with a shotgun to her head.

 _Aren't domestics meant to be good at that sort of thing,_ he thinks, and that's when he makes up his mind.

**1910**

His twentieth birthday comes round and nobody notices or mentions it, because he didn't say, but he planned it right and his monthly half-day is the next Friday. Ripon's no Manchester but it's better than Downton. Of course that's not saying much, _but it is saying something,_ and when he runs into Lily ( _I've told Mrs Hughes I'm with my Auntie Abigail, so you mustn't tell)_ at the dance he figures it'd be a waste if he didn't ask her at least once, so he does. She's shit at it, but what can you expect, from a farmgirl turned housemaid? Not much. So he gives her a good time and has one himself, and he doesn't hear an _oh, thank you, but I thought I'd give my feet a rest,_ or anything like that for the whole night. _T. Barrow_ ends up on more dance cards than you can count with two hands—and why shouldn't it, when nobody knows or cares who he is here? If anybody throws a punch it won't be about _that._

But nobody does.

When he gets back at the end of the night he's got a bruise spreading under his toenail, but it's worth it for the look on Edgar's face the next day when Lily smiles at him as he enters the servants' hall.

**1915**

The summer after he turns twenty-four is the worst summer he's ever had in his life by far, but there are, if he thinks hard about them, some good parts. In June he gets to take a bath, for example. A proper one, with soap and a tub. There's a silver lining if there ever was one.

For a time they're all put up in a quaint little riverside village that's empty of sons and full of daughters, and most of the latter like that they're there, even if their mothers don't. (The place is empty of fathers, too, of course.) Lieutenant Reed speaks French; he says that everybody here's under the impression the men in the RAMC are better than those in the Army, and _it'll only take a single man out of this platoon to change their minds_ and on and on and on and on. The words fall on tired ears. He is too fucking exhausted to even come up with anything he could do that _would_. Change minds, that is. The place is _empty of sons_ , after all.

Everybody else is excited about that, of course.

 _They're bloody sick of us by now, you'll be a fresh face,_ Prior says one evening, and Hamilton says, _come on, Barrow, you're not too good for it,_ and he relents. No more excuses. He didn't used to want them, if it were anywhere else at any other time he'd be the one badgering everybody else, but when you spend all the day on your feet tying off limbs it makes it hard to want to use yours at the end of it.

The first girl's name is Eugénie (or is it Eugènie?) and she can't say his name without hissing at the end of it so he lets her say To-ma, generously. Not that he's got a choice. Between the two of them they've got maybe about fifty words they both know the meaning of, but you don't need to use your mouth for this, and despite living in the middle of nowhere she's better at the animal dances than any English girl he's ever met. So are the rest of them. Perhaps having the regular army around was instructional.

 _You lying bastard, Corporal, you said you didn't dance,_ says Scott at the end of the night, and Whitley says, _no, said he didn't fucking like to,_ and Gallagher adds, _changed his tune once there were women around, didn't he?_

**1928**

By the time he's thirty-seven he's been to too many bloody weddings. This one is the first he's ever enjoyed. Seems a bit late, if you ask him, but no one did because no one cares—well, somebody did ask, when he told him it was coming up, but he's the exception.

 _That could've been me up there,_ Daisy tells him, not at all wistful but in awe all the same, as she should be. ( _Miss Baxter cleans up quite nice, doesn't she,_ Gertie had said at the church—he'd not heard it, himself, was too busy _standing at the altar with her,_ but Mrs Hughes had repeated it.)

He says, _you don't sound like it,_ which makes her laugh. He teaches her the Charleston, the jive and the jitterbug (Andy would never've known that one), and that's how they spend their night—her newly unattached and him the opposite, but nobody can know about that, so it must look the same as it always has. She's always been a quick learner and tonight's no different. Just like the old days before the war, years and years ago, dancing in the servants' hall and in the village. Afterwards it was rarer, but he knows she picked up the Foxtrot and the Tango from somebody else, somewhere in there.

 _How'd you learn all the things you know,_ she asks, laughing, clinging to his shoulders. He's just grabbed her by the wrist to prevent what would've been a nasty fall—the last thing they need is for her to knock her head on the floor in the schoolhouse—and he needs to catch his breath. Not young like he used to be (and that's all it is; Clarkson can shove off talking about _new research_ and _since the war)_.

 _Summer in New York'll teach you a lot,_ he says.

 _No, I meant before,_ she replies, _er, and after— but how_ was _New York, when you were there? We didn't get on then did we Thomas?_

They didn't _get on_ anywhere close to how they do now til he found himself writing her letters every other day from the Stiles's two and a half years ago.

He tells her, though. He leaves the best and worst parts out, and at the end of it she says, _I wonder what it's like, now… did you know Ivy's still there? What d'you think she's up to?_

How he's meant to know that he's got no idea, so he says, _not drinking champagne, I can tell you that,_ and then they quit dancing to go drink some more of it themselves.

He can't stop thinking about the last time he danced with somebody.

He hopes he's okay.

**1930**

_Forty,_ Richard says, with a kiss to his nose, _that's a landmark, Mr Barrow, isn't it._

 _Not a jubilee just yet,_ he replies, pretending to be grumpy, but he can't very well be that when he's got this man kissing him all over, can he?

Every time Richard laughs he wonders if he'll ever get tired of hearing it, and after three years he thinks maybe he can finally say the answer's _no._ Just as he'll never tire of seeing him smile, or feeling his kisses, or plenty of other things. No need to list them all. Maybe that's how it goes when you only get to see somebody once or twice in a fucking year, is you never tire of them because you never have them enough to begin with. And Richard was all ready to up and quit the Royal Household, til this time last year… It's a pipe dream, is all it is. Neither of them are ever gonna leave service and this is all they're gonna get, and

 _You get better and better every second I look at you,_ Richard says. He strokes his face. Soft and sentimental just like that. He always does seem to know when he's getting worked up, and he's the only person he has ever known who can stop it before it starts. _Every second._

_Maybe you should close your eyes, then, give me a break –_

This time he gets his mouth.

He gives in, but just when things are getting heated again Richard's grabbing him by the hands and dragging him out of his seat with a _look_ on his face.

 _What,_ he says.

 _I'd almost forgot,_ he says, like he didn't almost-forget anything at all. This must be what he's been giddy about since collecting him from King's Cross a few hours ago. (He'd _said_ it was just seeing him that did it, but he knows better.) _You wait here._

Raised eyebrows and a pout do nothing to convince him to say whatever it is he's trying to keep secret, and it's not til he's halfway out of the room (because he's got friends with _flats_ that have _more than one room_ ) that he says, _you close_ your _eyes._

Maybe he did almost forget.

So he stands there with his eyes shut, feeling foolish and self-conscious, not knowing if he's looking or not, if he's back in the room or not, plenty of things to be anxious over, and he's close to cheating and opening them again when he hears the familiar fuzz of a wireless in the next room over.

And then Richard's back in the room and there's his arm around his waist, another kiss this time to his ear, and he says, _better late than never,_ although what exactly is a long time in coming he has not yet specified, and then he adds, _you can open your eyes, love._

_What did I need them closed for, exactly?_

_That's what you do for surprises, isn't it?_ he jokes, (he hopes it's a joke), _er, I thought it made more sense than having you cover your ears,_ and he looks so sheepish that it makes him laugh; he thinks, _I love you,_ and means it, but he doesn't say it out loud.

_Reckon it's high time I stump up on that dance I owe you._

So it's that.

_The one you owe me._

_Yeah,_ says Richard, _the one I owe you._ He is grinning and he is not the only one. _You didn't think all those pretty words that night at Downton were stuff and nonsense, did you?_

He had, at the time. Til the next morning. Richard knows that.

_Er, we don't have one, at the Palace, a wireless that is, you'll remember I was choosy about the date, well, I had no way of knowing if the programmes were the same here as in Yorkshire—Molly's been listening for me, but_

Kisses never fail to shut him up; this time's no exception.

It turns out that Richard is equally as good at dancing as he is following directions, or being on time. Not very. Not at all. Those things are probably all related but it doesn't matter because he's him and he's here and he's _perfect,_ he is so fucking perfect, and there is enough space in this flat for him to be brought into the right decade (or maybe not; he's not danced himself since the last one, now he thinks of it) and they have the whole night to themselves, so this is _theirs._ Just theirs.

But he does take pity on him eventually, and they end up sticking to proper partner dances, mostly Tangos and Foxtrots. Richard's better at those, even if he keeps looking at his feet.

He did that himself, when he was learning to follow; he can remember it. If he closes his eyes he can remember it.

 _Right, when do we switch?_ Richard asks eventually. They've somehow managed to lose about half their clothing: rolled up shirtsleeves, ties unpinned, braces uncovered. It might be the first time he's ever seen Richard like this when they're not tumbling into bed and he has expressed his pleasure at this by letting his hands wander south and holding him closer than he otherwise might.

_Do we?_

_Well, we switch with everything else, don't we,_ with a sparkle in his eye and a little bounce of his heels (he smiles with his whole body let alone his whole face), and so Thomas puts his hand on his shoulder and they do.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr as [@combeferre](https://combeferre.tumblr.com) !


End file.
